Justification and the Gentiles

It’s not a new insight with me, but it came home with particular force recently: Paul says in Romans 3:28 that “we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of Torah.” To suppoose the point, he asks two rhetorical questions, the first expecting a negative and the second a positive answer: “Or is God [the God] of Jews only? Is He not [the God] of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also.” These questions assume that if justification was by works of Torah, then it would imply that God is only God of Jews. In other words, “works of Torah” can be performed only by Jews. And this means that justification by faith involves the claim that Jews and Gentiles equally can be justified before God and be Abraham’s seed.